The Changing Scale of Integrative Pueblo Communities in the Northern San Juan Region: Basketmaker III through Pueblo III.

Summary

Most studies of ancestral Pueblo communities in the northern San Juan region of southwestern Colorado use clusters of roughly contemporary habitations, often associated with public architecture, to define the spatial extent of residential communities. The term "community" has also been used to define important social groupings at both larger and smaller spatial scales depending on the focus of study and the type of social connection suggested. This study uses the locations of great kivas, one of the most persistent forms of Pueblo civic architecture, to analyze the spatial extent of integrative communities in the central Mesa Verde region from A.D. 500 to A.D. 1280. Analyses of data using different GIS techniques suggests that changing spatial relationships between great kivas, as architectural symbols coordinated community effort, reflect accompanying changes in the scale and composition of the associated integrative communities. This study uses data developed by the Village Ecodynamics Project and provides an empirical means of delineating approximate community boundaries while also discussing accompanying changes in social structure over time. Finally, this study addresses how the definition of integrative communities can complement previous community studies spanning a range of scales.

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Cite this Record

The Changing Scale of Integrative Pueblo Communities in the Northern San Juan Region: Basketmaker III through Pueblo III.. Grant Coffey, Susan Ryan. Presented at The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California. 2015 ( tDAR id: 396216)